Cameron’s gaze slipped to her and froze. "You are hurt." His fingers tightened imperceptibly on the trigger of the gun.
"No! Not here." She understood what he felt, what he saw. For almost sixteen years she’d felt the same way, devoid of feeling, seeing what was happening with heightened clarity, her knowledge of the consequences sharp, but feeling nothing, harboring no emotion, because emotion meant hesitation, and hesitation meant loss. "Don’t," she repeated. "Not here, not for Byrd. Not for me."
"What if I do it just for the personal satisfaction?"
"It’s too dangerous. There are soldiers—"
"She’s right," the dark man nearest Cameron said. "Shoot him here and we don’t get out." He lowered his own weapon and unholstered a knife. "Better to kill him quietly."
"No," Acasia said. The word was flat and sharp, a command from a combat officer to a soldier.
The dark man paused. "Leave him alive and it’s on your conscience what he does tomorrow."
"No." She circled Dominic until she was close to Cameron. "Don’t do this to yourself… to us," she urged him softly. "Don’t pay this price. I need you not to do this, Cam. I need you."
His eyes slid to her. What had she said? Need. "He’s responsible for too much suffering, cost too many lives. Give me an alternative to killing him, one I can live with."
"He’s killed ZNLF families. They’d deal with him—" she hesitated, not wanting to put too fine a point on just how they’d deal with him "—justly."
Cameron smiled, understanding the point she didn’t make, and moved his gun away from Dominic’s head.
"We’ll send him to the devil," he agreed. "I could live with that."
* * *
"How’s your hand?"
Cameron leaned against the frame of the door to Fred’s guest room. Acasia sat cross–legged on the bed opposite him, chin propped in her left hand, while Fred placed the final stitch in her right.
Since the moment Cameron had appeared in Sanchez’s office and they’d returned to the ZNLF camp, she’d had time to go from being glad to see him to complete recognition of what he’d done. He’d lied to her about trusting her, about his willingness to let her find Dominic herself, and he’d arrived prepared, right down to his small but highly skilled army, to seek out the mercenary and kill him. Before she did. She’d expected as much, but had hoped he’d prove her expectations wrong.
"I’ll live," she said coolly. "I thought you could help me better from home?"
His fingers brushed the muzzle of the .45 still dangling from his hand, and he eyed her without remorse. "I couldn’t let you do this alone."
"I wasn’t alone."
"That’s not how I saw it."
They studied one another across the impasse, weighing possibilities, double standards, courses of action. The action he’d taken was one Acasia had long expected from herself, but never from him. It put him in a different light, made her see the future as a cloudy, indefinite place, despite the fact that she loved him, needed him, didn’t want to live without him, choosing instead to commit herself to him in all ways, both despite and because of the demands. She no longer cared about what he might expect of her. She could work with that. Now she cared about something she’d never really thought about before…
What she expected from him.
She looked away, her jaw working. Fred finished working on her hand, looked from her to Cameron thoughtfully, and left without voicing his thoughts. Acasia cradled her right hand in her left, rocking with the ache, both physical and emotional, not knowing where to go, what to think.
"Tell me." Cameron was quiet, intense, passionate. He loved her, but they were on uncommon ground, in no man’s land, skirting one another’s territory. "Tell me."
Acasia gazed at him, silent for a moment, sorting through her jumbled thoughts for a way to go on. "Who—" She paused, hating the question, needing the answer. "Who did you come for? Who was your priority, me or Dom?"
Cameron shook his head. "I don’t know. I wanted him for what he’s done, and I wanted to take care of you. I’m not sure there was a difference between the two." He made an offhand gesture with the gun, his hand stopping in mid–movement. He’d forgotten he was holding it. He quickly ejected the bullet clip, cleared the chamber and set the weapon carefully on the floor. Then he shut the door behind him and knelt in front of Acasia. "I couldn’t let you come in here alone. I couldn’t let you take responsibility for things I wanted to see done. I wanted Mansour. I knew you’d try to get to him some way, and I couldn’t live with the possibilities. I had to come."
"I know." Tears were hot behind her eyes, threatening her throat. If he hadn’t come…
But it wasn’t a case of if. He’d come. He was here, now, in front of her. She bit her tongue to keep her lips from trembling. Cameron raised a hand to her cheek, let it drop without touching her.
"We can’t do this, Cam. I love you," she said, giving voice to the words they both wanted to hear. "But we can’t… If we’re going to have a future, you can’t be rescuing me at the drop of a hat."
"And you’ve got to quit playing the Lone Ranger."
"I’m not playing anything anymore, Cam. I crossed that line last night."
"So did I, Casie."
They studied one another for a moment, an uncomfortable awkwardness between them. Acasia knew how easy it would be to let go despite the love, to say goodbye with regret. To blame a lonely future on the possibility of forever placing one another in danger, on both the selflessness and the selfishness of love. She’d taken that route once already; she didn’t want to take it again. She wanted more. She wanted it all. To make herself whole, she needed to complete Cameron. He was the earth, and she was the moon, bound to him by ties stronger than logic. "Forever" was a commitment she wanted to make, had to make. It was worth any risk, even rejection.
With that knowledge came serenity and courage, and she drew a deep breath.
Cameron watched her features change and soften as she made her decision, and his chest tightened. He didn’t want to trust his sight. He needed her to tell him what she’d decided so that he could hear how deep the choice went and know whether it would last beyond this moment, or was only born of it. He needed her as he prayed she needed him. He wanted to hear her say it again, now that he wasn’t holding a gun on someone whose life she was bargaining for.
"Say it," he said quietly.
Acasia smiled. "About that horse I’ve been riding…"
"You ready to get off of it?"
"Yeah. I promised myself a long time ago that I’d quit the field before I lost my edge. It’s about time to get rid of my saddle sores, study my options, straighten out my priorities, buy a chest of drawers—"
Cameron shut his eyes. Once, just once, he wished she would speak plainly. "Tell me," he said tightly, "in words of one syllable. So there’s no mistake."
Acasia twisted her fingers in his shirt. She wanted to say it as much as he wanted to hear it. "I need you. I want to be with you. Always. Whatever it takes. I love you, Cam."
He looked at her. Her voice held no buts and no maybes; her eyes were dark and unafraid, full of forever. For the first time since he’d known her, her "I love you" held back nothing, offered everything.
He touched the palm of her right hand, and she caught her breath, afraid to breathe. Her fingers curled around his, but he spread them gently open, his jaw working as he studied the arc of new stitches so close to the old scar. Life would never be easy with her; she would never let it be. She lived by too many rules, with too much passion, with too little thought for herself. But she would be worth it, worth every moment of frustration, irritation, aggravation and fear. They were part of her, just like her ability to give. He didn’t want perfection; perfection didn’t satisfy. Acasia did.
He turned her hand over and raised it to his lips. The gaze that met hers over the tips of her fingers was full of passion and conviction and love. "Come home with me."
Wordlessly, Acasia nodded. Relief was an intense, eager shudder in her lungs, a stinging pressure in her throat and behind her eyes. She blinked at him, biting her tongue, running her fingers restlessly up and down the front of his shirt. "Cam, I—"
"Shh," Cameron said, raising a finger to her lips. He pulled her toward him, a hand cradling her neck while a finger traced her jaw to her chin, then dropped to her throat and trailed down her chest. His eyes were dark and greedy, his grin suggestive.
"Shh," he whispered again. "Let me."
The possibilities, like the tomorrows, were endless.
I
T HAD BEEN hot in Jamaica that afternoon, and now Acasia was glad of the thermal glass between her and the swirling flakes of snow that lit up the darkness outside.
She’d spent the last week pampering a reluctant client through the decision to upgrade his obsolete security system. When forbearance and the desire to get home to Cameron had gotten the better of her, she had put on her gloves, waltzed into his building and left business cards on the desks of the corporate president and the chief of research. The cards had been a convincing touch, but it was the way she’d left the safes in both offices open and relieved them of some delicate files that had forced his decision. When last seen, he’d been talking electronics with a conveniently available Julianna, and Acasia had come home.
Below and in the distance, Rhiannon’s lights dotted the night, pink and yellow diamonds on a landscape of pearl. Cameron was working late, deep inside some project of his own, but he was near, and it was good to be home. He waited for her often enough that when Acasia had the chance to return the favor, she took it. It was the small considerations that kept their marriage strong.
A log popped in the fireplace, showering the grate with sparks, and Acasia jumped, grinning when she recalled where she was. She’d almost overcome the tendency to start at every noise.
She snuggled comfortably deeper into the down comforter she’d wrapped herself up in after her bath and propped her chin on her knees. Waiting for Cameron was one of the best things about marriage. There was something homey in the mundane task, and she’d learned in the last year that she very much liked homey things—tempered by bouts of excitement, of course. Her thirst for life’s less reasonable locales had waned only enough to allow Cameron first claim on her.
She turned eagerly to the door at the first sound of footsteps on the porch. Her ears followed every sound: stamping boots; clothing slapped to dust off the snow; the rasp of the latch being lifted; the creak of hinges. And then Cameron was in the entryway on the other side of the wall. He padded over braided rugs into the kitchen, and Acasia heard the refrigerator door open, bottles clink together and the door bang shut.
"Beer?" Cameron asked, holding one out to her as he moved into the room, smiling at her as he came.
Acasia stretched, grinning. "How’d you know I was here?"
Cameron set the beer on the table in the center of the dining room. "I had the devil of a time getting to sleep after you called last night."
"So you got Jules out of bed and sent her on a mission of mercy?"
"Something like that."
"You have a brilliant mind, my love."
"A brilliant mind and cold hands." There was suggestion in the tone, and Acasia’s heart flooded as he paced deliberately toward her and knelt in front of the window seat on which she was settled. "You look nice and toasty," he observed. "Share?"
Bare skin glowed in the firelight when he parted the quilt, and heat radiated from Acasia to warm him and make his blood simmer. "I do like coming home to you," he murmured when her arms and legs opened to surround him, draw him close, lock him in securely. His icy hands slid up her sides, his wool–covered arms hugging her fiercely. Their noses kissed, rubbed together, greeting.
"I missed you," Acasia said.
"Me too."
"Although you do have an incredibly maudlin streak in you. What made you put up the Christmas tree before Thanksgiving?" Acasia eyed the sparkling evergreen over Cameron’s shoulder, pulling back from him slightly.
"I’m an opportunist?" Cameron’s rough thumbs stroked the area around Acasia’s nipples. "I wanted to make the most of the season of brotherly love and your time between trips?"
Acasia’s breath sighed over his lips as she arched toward him. "You have on too many clothes."
"The better to tease you with, my dear," Cameron intoned, then laughed when her languid hands reached for his waist, intent on finding skin.
"I took a leave from the company, by the way," she said when they’d pulled his sweater off together and flung it away.
"Oh?" Cameron’s fingers stilled on the buttons of his flannel shirt, his pulse skipping a bit in anticipation. "How long?"
Acasia unbuckled his belt. "Long enough to complete a project you and I discussed a while back."
Cameron grinned and sucked in his belly so that she could undo his pants. "There are so many. Which one is this?"
"Beginning the first of our four boys and a girl—unless you think a mother who travels occasionally would be less than satisfactory?"
His pewter eyes grew molten, and he pulled her close to bury his face in her neck. "You’re right," he said. "I do have on too many clothes."
He rid himself of them quickly while Acasia settled the comforter on the floor to await him. Her knees parted, and her hips lifted when he joined her, his lips meeting hers hungrily while he pulled half the cover over them.
"Hi," he said, greeting her properly at last.
Acasia arched her throat when he moved, her eyes drifting closed as she smiled up at him. "Hi," she said. "Welcome home."
Their mouths met again, softly, lazily, finding no need to rush. Above the window seat, snow drifted onto the sills outside.
Outside in the night, below the stars, the moon glowed as though the man inside it was smiling his approval, and snowflakes graced the earth in benediction, like water from the moon.
–END–